When in the early phases of conjuring up any story, one of the first things I always think about is what form would best suit the narrative I wish to tell: short story or novel? I normally find myself drawn to short stories, mostly due to the concise, focused nature such a restriction on length imposes upon you as a writer, and because I think that, for the most part, it reflects and complements my own writing style of very dense, descriptive prose. Nevertheless, that moment of careful consideration between the two formats is a constant stage of the creation process, and so I thought that I’d share some of my own opinions about each, alongside the strengths and pitfalls I’ve found inherent in their different approaches to storytelling.
Guy de Maupassant, a 19th century French author, and considered one of the masters of the short story form. Clearly a master of the mustache as well.
From a writing-craft stance, I’ve always found there to be something intrinsically impressive about the short story form. To condense a story and present all the necessary information for there to be both character and narrative payoff at the end is a skill I think often goes overlooked. I can’t even begin to count the amount of times I’ve started on what I imagined would be a short story, only to then realize that what I had started could really only work as a smaller section in a longer, novel-length piece. For works of writing that short to be successful, it is often the case that you have to focus the story on usually just a single narrative event, almost like a snapshot of an moment as opposed to an entire video stream. Therein lies the hardest part of the short story form: figuring out from which angle and at what precise moment that snapshot would elicit the strongest, most visceral effect on the viewer (or reader in this case).
In a short story, every single word used should be critical. There should be no wasted space, no added fluff or extraneous garnish; everything should be there with the express intent of creating that single snapshot view, because of the limited amount of space you are given to complete that task. In this way, I’ve sometimes thought it akin to poetry. Instead of the need to adhere to meter, it is the word count which must be maintained, and in order to fit those restrictions, sometimes you have to think of creative, out-of-the-box ways to best convey or describe information that might otherwise be given in a very conventional, straight-forward matter. With one of my published short stories, one of the requirements was that it needed to be less than 2500 words, and let me tell you, trying to fit a story’s worth of information into so constrained a space forced me to really think about what I was writing and how I was writing it in a very different, almost puzzle-like way.
Pulp magazines, such as Amazing Stories and Weird Tales, published more genre-focused, fantastical short stories in the early 1900’s.
All that being said, it is interesting to see the state of the short story art form at the present moment. While it might put greater strain on the writer in certain ways, one would almost think that because of the hectic, work and stress-filled days so often exemplary of modern life, readers would flock to the shorter format of storytelling than the longer, more time-intensive commitments that are novels. After all, short stories are meant to be the sort of thing you can sit down and finish in one sitting, a quick and easy romp that will hopefully have a satisfying payoff and illicit a positive reader response by its conclusion. And though there definitely is a market for these artistic works (and probably a more expansive one than ever, thanks to the internet and the plethora on online publications one can find), the shorter, more compact form of narrative storytelling is still overwhelmingly eclipsed in everyday consumption by its hundred-plus-page counterpart.
It’s easy to see why the novel format is so popular, just in the same way as long-form television shows are popular: audiences love to get invested in their fiction, and, more importantly, the characters introduced in those fictions. For some people, the excessive breadth of details and information that can only be achieved in a novel is the main selling point. They want to dive in to the other expansive world, whether it be realistic or fantastical, and the greater attention paid to fleshing out and expanding upon the events happening in that setting, the better. This limitless potential of expression is where the novel format really shines, and where a short story can come across as somewhat lacking in comparison. It truly is amazing how much story-telling depth some authors are able to achieve in this area, and how brilliantly they can craft sprawling, intricately-crafted narratives within those settings.
That being said, if a short story is like a poem, creating a novel is, in my opinion, like composing and conducting a symphony. The different instruments are as the different characters that are introduced, playing off one another in harmony or in opposition, and each movement in the music is like an arc in the overall story, the beats of rising and falling action. When it all comes together and goes off without a hitch, the result is both breathtaking and seems effortless. When it goes wrong, however…
We’ve all read those books that end without a satisfying payoff, or which leave plot threads dangling aimlessly about even after the last page has been turned. Novels where character actions or motivations can seem to come out of nowhere, or where some areas of pacing can leave you with reading whiplash. As liberating as writing in such a lengthy form can be, the freedom can also lead an author to putting more on their plate than they can handle, wanting to cram in as much detail as possible until a story becomes overly cumbersome and convoluted. Usually this pans out in the story feeling as if it treads water for too long in sections, or that the ending is too abrupt because there are too many disparate story lines going on to effectively wrap up at once. Even works by famous, well-regarded authors can display these traits. Stephan King is notorious for having trouble ending his books, and you can sometimes see why, based on how much information some of his longer novels try to fit in them. Meanwhile Mark Twain, writing in the serialized novel format of the 19th century, would stretch out his stories longer than they might otherwise need be, in order to keep his readers buying the subsequent installments for as long as possible. When collected together in a single book, this can give the impression, especially to modern readers, that there are sections that are otherwise superfluous towards the overall plot, and act more as padding than meaningful development.
Mark Twain, and his equally strong mustache prowess.
Each time I’ve attempted to start a project of that length, I almost immediately find myself bogged down by uncertainty and doubt, worrying about whether or not everything will stay in tune and daunted by trying to figure out how to keep all the little details contained in so long a narrative perfectly in tempo with one another. It probably speaks to my own poor planning and outlining habits, but I’ve never managed to make it more than about a third through an average length novel manuscript without stopping, either realizing there are major structural flaws that need to be changed, or not knowing how to properly proceed so that the flow of events comes across as natural or earned. It’s for this reason that I’ve tried to focus the majority of my writing efforts on short stories, the format I’ve been able to have even the smallest modicum of success in, but at the same time, it’s not an area I want to exclusively work in. Sometimes, the stories rambling around in my head just wouldn’t be appropriate for so small scale a project. I really want them to see the light of day, really want readers to be able to explore the worlds I’ve envisioned and see the characters that I’ve inhabited them with; it just comes down to practice, and as of right now, based on my own sensibilities and personal tastes, I feel I haven’t yet cut my teeth sharp enough to take a bite out of that endeavor. One day though.